34. Failure

It is of the LORD's mercies that we are not consumed, because his compassions fail not. They are new every morning: great is thy faithfulness. Lamentations 3:22-23.

There is no failure so great that a Christian cannot rise from it. > Helen C. White.

A failure is a man who has blundered but is not able to cash in the experience. > Elbert Hubbard.

Not failure, but low aim, is crime. > James Russell Lowell.

Ninety-nine percent of the failures come from people who have the habit of making excuses. > George Washington Carver.

I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure: Try to please everybody. > Herbert Bayard Swope.

A man should never be ashamed to own he has been in the wrong, which is but saying, in other words, that he is wiser today than he was yesterday. > Jonathan Swift.

The only bad thing about making a mistake is to keep on making it. > James Rupert Nance.

Every failure I’ve ever had is because I said yes when I should have said no. > Moss Hart.

Failures are divided into two classes – those who thought and never did, and those who did and never thought. > John Charles Salak.

The only time you don’t fail is the last time you try anything – and it works. > William Strong.

A man can fail many times, but he isn’t a failure until he begins to blame someone else. > John Burroughs.

Show me a thoroughly satisfied man and I will show you a failure. > Thomas Edison.

It is not a disgrace to fail. Failing is one of the greatest arts in the world. > Charles Kettering.

See also Proverbs 15:22; 2 Corinthians 6:3-10; 13:5-7.

33. Family and Home

Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Exodus 20:12

The most important thing a father can do for his children is to love their mother. > Theodore M. Hesburgh.

Home is where the heart is. > Pliny the Elder.

A family is a unit composed not only of children but of men, women, an occasional animal, and the common cold. > Ogden Nash.

Home interprets heaven. Home is heaven for beginners. > Charles H. Parkhurst.

Everyone believes divorce breaks up families. This is not so. The broken family is not the result of the divorce; divorce is the result of a broken family. > Paul W. Alexander.

It is dangerous to confuse children with angels. > David Fyfe.

Domestic happiness depends on the ability to overlook. > Roy L. Smith.

To be happy at home is the end of all labour. > Samuel Johnson.

Any woodsman call tell you that in a broken and sundered nest, one can hardly expect to find more than a precious few whole eggs. So it is with the family. > Thomas Jefferson.

A happy family is been an earlier heaven. > John Bowring.

Heaven will be the perfection we have always longed for. All the things that made earth unlovely and tragic will be absent in heaven. There will be no night, no death, no disease, no sorrow, no tears, no ignorance, no disappointment, no war. It will be filled with health, vigour, virility, knowledge, happiness, worship, love, and perfection. > Billy Graham.

See also Proverbs 1:7-8; Acts 16:31-34.

32. Guilt

Let us draw near with a true heart in full assurance of faith, having our hearts sprinkled from an evil conscience, and our bodies washed with pure water. Hebrews 10:22.

Every man is guilty of all the good he didn’t do. > Voltaire.

The one thing that doesn’t abide by majority rule is a person’s conscience. > Harper Lee.

Remorse: beholding heaven and feeling hell. > George Moore.

Humanity is never so beautiful as when praying for forgiveness, or else forgiving another. > Jean Paul Richter.

If his conditions are met, God is bound by his Word to forgive any man or any woman of any sin because of Christ. > Billy Graham.

The only tyrant in this world is the still voice within. > Mahatma Gandhi.

If we are sinners forgiven, we ought to behave as forgiven, welcomed home, crowned with wonderful love in Christ, and so cheer and encourage all about us, who often go heavily because we reflect our gloom upon them instead of our grateful love, hope, confidence. > Father Congreve.

Remorse is the pain of sin. > Theodore Parker.

It is about as hard to absolve yourself of your own guilt as it is to sit in your own lap. Wrongdoing sparks guilt sparks wrongdoing ad nauseam, and we all try to disguise the grim process from both ourselves and everyone else. In order to break the circuit we need somebody before whom we can put aside the disguise, trusting that when he sees us for what we fully are, he won’t run away screaming with, if nothing worse, laughter. > Fredrick Buechner.

See also John 9:39-41; Romans 7:15-25; James 2:8-10.

31. Time

Beloved, now are we the sons of God, and it doth not yet appear what we shall be: but we know that, when he shall appear, we shall be like him; for we shall see him as he is. And every man that hath this hope in him purifieth himself, even as he is pure. 1 John 3:2-3.

Each of us has a capacity for God and an ability to relate to him in a personal way. When we do, he brings to us pardon for the past, peace for the present and promise for the future. > Ralph S. Bell.

Enjoy the little things, for one day you may look back and realize they were the big things. > Robert Brault.

Lost, yesterdat, somewhere between sunrise and sunset, two golden hours, each set with sixty diamond minutes. No reward is offered, for they are gone forever. > Horace Mann

Those who make the worst use of their time are the first to complain of its shortness. > Jean de La Bruyère.

We all find time to do what we really want to do. > William Feather.

Does thou love life? Then do not squander time, for that is the stuff life is made of. > Benjamin Franklin.

Nothing is worth more than this day. > Johann Wolfgang von Goethe.

One of the illusions of life is that the present hour is not the critical decisive hour. Write it on your heart that every day is the best day is the best day of the year. > Ralph Waldo Emerson.

No man ever sank under the burden of the day. It is when tomorrow’s burden is added to the burden of today that the weight is more than a man can bear. Never load yourself so. If you find yourself so loaded, at least remember this: it is your doing, not God’s. He begs you to leave the future to him, and mind the present. > George Macdonald.

It is said that sheep may get lost simply by nibbling away at the grass and never looking up. That can be true for any of us. We can focus so much on what is immediately before us that we fail to see life in larger perspective. > Donald Bitsberger.

See also Ecclesiastes 3:1-8; Jeremiah 29:11; Matthew 6:25-34.